


the apple of god's eye

by thecoquimonster



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen, I love blasphemy please come love blasphemy with me, It's the Apocalypse...... 2!, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:55:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21944710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecoquimonster/pseuds/thecoquimonster
Summary: Two years after the Armagedidn't, Aziraphale and Crowley find a baby on the doorstep of their cottage in South Downs.Turns out, that's Jesus fucking Christ.
Relationships: Anathema Device/OFC, Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 28





	1. child of the poor/what child is this

**Author's Note:**

  * For [meliaemere](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meliaemere/gifts).



> I love a good A/C kidfic and I love blasphemy. So here I am writing an angel and a demon raising the Second Coming. You know, the usual shenanigans. 
> 
> Note: I tagged it only with the book and not the show because it is primarily book fic but I do take some things from show canon. :)
> 
> The fic title is from [Sun](https://youtu.be/3NhxeVJBUnA) by Sleeping At Last, and the chapter title comes from the title(s) of the [hymn(s)](https://youtu.be/5DDJ9BPsCjc).
> 
> Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

There was a knock on the door, rousing Aziraphale from his light doze against Crowley’s shoulder. He blinked, trying to clear his eyes from sleep. It was warm and dim in the cottage’s living room; the colorful twinkling Christmas lights, flickering images of _It’s A Wonderful Life_ on the television screen, and the dying embers in the fireplace the only light. Scattered around the floor were gift wrappings and a couple of empty wine bottles.

Gently Aziraphale extricated himself from Crowley, got up from the couch, and made his way to the front door, frowning as he tried to imagine who on earth would be at the door the night of December 25th.

He was entirely unprepared for what he found at the doorstep.

Aziraphale had been expecting carolers—annoying but well-meaning. This was a baby swaddled in a ratty blanket and placed in a basket. The child was quiet but obviously cold; it would not last long in the frosty night. Aziraphale looked up from the baby, trying to see if whoever had left the child on their doorstep was still around, and found no one.

The child let out a cry and the angel rushed to take it into his arms. He noticed a golden envelope in the basket as he lifted the baby out and instantly his stomach dropped. This was not happening. This could not be happening. Adam Young had promised— no more meddling.

They should be left alone. When they had stopped the Apocalypse two summers ago, Adam Young had assured him and Crowley that they would be left alone. It seems that the boy hadn’t been able to keep his promise for long.

With shaking fingers, he reached out and took the envelope.

He turned to see Crowley, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and furrowing his brows at the bundle in Aziraphale’s arms.

“What’s that?” Crowley wondered, standing from the couch and taking a few slow steps towards him.

“I-I don’t—” said Aziraphale, holding the baby out for Crowley to take. The baby let out a whine and curled into the demon’s chest, and Crowley looked stunned. Aziraphale sighed and made his way to the kitchen to find his letter-opener.

Crowley followed Aziraphale as he took the letter-opener out of a drawer and shuffled over to the counter to open the golden envelope.

_Dear Aziraphale,_

_In lieu of sending Gabriel, I have decided to pen this letter to you directly._

_Yes, this baby you hold is the Second Coming. Though My Maria agreed to take on this duty, she is unable to care for him. It’s a dreadfully sad thing, really. All she wanted was to keep him safe._

_I hope then that I can trust you and your husband to care for My son and prepare him for his mission._

_With love,_

_God_

_PS: No funny business, Crowley._

They were silent for a long moment. Aziraphale stared uncomprehendingly at the letter in his shaking hands. As he read it over and over again, his breathing became rapid and shallow.

“‘No funny business, Crowley,’” the demon echoed, breaking the silence hanging over them. “Well, it’s a good thing I haven’t needed to obey Her orders in millennia.”

But Aziraphale was hardly paying attention. His focus had been arrested by the words ‘prepare him for his mission’ and his stomach tightened. This wasn’t fair. This wasn’t—Aziraphale had already chosen his side. And it wasn’t Heaven’s side, it wasn’t Hell’s. It was his own side. _Their_ own side. Here. With Crowley. On Earth.

“Angel?” Crowley asked, concerned.

Aziraphale felt a gentle hand on his shoulder and he came back to himself, blinking away his tears and meeting Crowley’s steady yellow gaze. He tried desperately to ignore the holy infant, so tender and mild, in Crowley’s arms. “I—I don’t belong to Heaven.”

Crowley swallowed and waited for Aziraphale to continue.

“And,” Aziraphale took a breath, “you don’t belong to Hell. And neither does Adam.”

“No,” Crowley agreed softly. He shifted the Christ child in his arms, trying to find a more comfortable position for both him and the baby. “So then what do you want to do with the child?”

Aziraphale finally braved himself to look at the bundle in Crowley’s arms. The Christ child was so small; the blanket enveloped him so that all that Aziraphale could see of him were the thin wisps of dark hair. He had been there, at Christ’s birth, the first time. “We can’t just abandon him. We had—haven’t we talked about this, Crowley?”

“About what?” he snorted, “Preventing the Apocalypse a second time? We rather hoped we wouldn’t have to, if I recall.”

“Being fathers,” Aziraphale replied. “We wanted a child. And now one has been dropped on our doorstep. I—I do want to keep him. It’s his mission that frightens me.”

“Aziraphale,” said Crowley, and his voice was devastating in its gentleness, “don’t worry so much about what is written. Erase it. Scribble over it with permanent marker. Scratch it out. Being on our own side means we make our own missions. It’s what Adam did. Perhaps we’re meant to show this child the same thing.”

Aziraphale said nothing, but he opened his arms for Crowley to lower the Christ child into. As he looked down at the sleeping infant’s face, he felt calmed and comforted. This was a person who, above all, had preached for love and stood with the marginalized. He had been one of them. If his mother Maria had felt so powerless that she had given him up for Aziraphale and Crowley to raise, he still was.

“Jesus won’t fit,” the angel murmured, “it’s not a very common name in English speaking countries, I’m afraid.”

“Who cares about it being common?” Crowley scoffed. He looked down at the infant and softened, reaching out to stroke the soft dark hair.

But Aziraphale still hesitated. “Well… What about Joshua?”

“Joshua Fell-Crowley?”

Aziraphale’s eyebrows furrowed. “Not Crowley-Fell?”

“Well, this way his initials would be J-F-C,” Crowley said, grinning. “Jesus Fucking Christ.”

“Absolutely _not_ ,” said Aziraphale, his attempts at being stern overtaken by his amusement. “He’ll be Joshua Crowley-Fell and that’s final.”

Crowley threw up his head to laugh and wrapped his arms around Aziraphale and the baby Joshua. “We need a nursery. Diapers. A crib. And baby formula.”

“Quite a list,” Aziraphale murmured. “And nothing’s open today.”

“That’s what miracles are for,” said Crowley, and Aziraphale pulled away from him slightly to send him a bit of a glare. “Angel, if a baby hadn’t literally been dropped at ours without warning, I would have loved to spend weeks building the perfect nursery with you. But as it is, it’s a bit of an emergency, isn’t it?”

“I suppose a crib will do,” said Aziraphale. “He can sleep in our room while we build the nursery.”

“There’s a thought,” Crowley said. He waved his hand and baby formula appeared on the kitchen counter, and presumably all of their other necessities had been brought into existence upstairs.

Aziraphale’s arms were starting to tire of holding Joshua, so he made his way to the second floor of the cottage to their room, Crowley trailing after him.

“Oh,” he breathed as he stepped into their room, where a crib had appeared. Crowley had even miracled fairy lights around the crib. “It’s lovely. My dear, this is just absolutely lovely.”

“Happy Christmas, Aziraphale,” Crowley said softly, as Aziraphale carefully lowered Joshua onto the crib. He started and Aziraphale turned to look at his husband, catching him in the middle of rolling his eyes. “Oh. Christmas! Oh, She thinks She’s so clever, doesn’t She?”

Aziraphale smiled. “Happy Christmas, my dear.”

Aziraphale didn’t like much about this situation. He still worried about the future, but he knew that he and Crowley would face anything standing together. This was just another baby and another possible apocalypse to avert. And they weren’t alone in that, either.

Assured that Joshua would be happily warm and asleep for at least a couple of hours, Aziraphale went to phone Anathema Device.


	2. tidings of comfort and joy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, sorry for the long wait. I love living in my imaginations of this story but when it comes to writing it... phew it's hard. Mostly I just want to skip past the baby stuff, but I can't yet!

The phone rang five times before Anathema answered. “Aziraphale?”

“Oh! You know it’s me. Good, well, my dear girl, I do hate to bother you so late on this blessed holiday,” said the angel, and instantly launched into his story without letting Anathema get a word in. He told her about everything, including his brief little panic attack at his realization that he and Crowley would now have to raise the literal second coming of Christ, and it was at this point when the young witch began to prepare some tea for herself.

Her mug of tea was nearly empty by the time Aziraphale was finished with his digressions and got to the point.

“All this to say, dear Anathema, that Crowley and I are quite understandably out of sorts. I had hoped—well, I read the book of course, but I had hoped if you knew of anything else that Agnes Nutter could have alluded to? Or perhaps you share some of her gift—”

Now, Anathema knew quite well that there was a possibility that Agnes Nutter made predictions about events following The End of the World That Wasn’t, but she would never know. She’d burned the damn thing—well, Newt had made her do it. Sort of. He’d _suggested_ that she should. And Anathema wasn’t exactly sure whether she wished that she could travel back in time to stop herself, or if she was still relieved not to have all of those prophecies hanging over her head.

Regardless, burning the second book of prophecy had had more positive outcomes than negative so far: she had parted ways with Newt not long after. She’d had the opportunity to sit down and ask why she’d done all those things Agnes Nutter had penned, most notably those moments she had shared with Newt, and had realized she’d only done them because it was what was written, and what had been expected of her.

What she _wanted_ was entirely different, and had sent her looking for those two consenting bicycle repairmen. But that was another story. 

This story, it seemed, was using Anathema as a device to console a fretful angel who had been thrown back into his old uncertainties, and this was not an Aziraphale that Anathema was used to dealing with.

“Prophesizing isn’t an exact science,” Anathema said, trying to figure out how to let the angel’s hopes down gently. “And as for… Well, you see, after the Apocalypse didn’t happen, I received a package in the mail. It was another book of prophecies, written by Agnes Nutter herself.”

She could feel Aziraphale’s excitement over the phone.

“I burned it.”

“Oh.”

She hummed. “I’m afraid we’ve gone very off-script.”

“I see,” said Aziraphale. “I’m still not sure how I feel about that. I don’t know what to do.”

“Just raise the kid, Aziraphale,” Anathema said, standing up to take her empty mug to the kitchen. “You love the earth. Crowley loves the earth. If the two of you raise him with that love, everything will fall into place.”

“I suppose I just don’t like not knowing what to expect when it comes to these things,” Aziraphale said. “How can I stop something if I don’t know what I’m up against?”

“Like I said, Aziraphale. Raise the kid. If you don’t know what to expect I suggest reading parenting books.”

“Parenting books?” the angel echoed as if the thought hadn’t even occurred to him. “I—yes, right. Of course. Giving him a normal life—it’s the best thing we can do.” It had worked with Adam Young, after all.

In the background, she heard the distinct sounds of a baby wailing. “I assume that’s baby Joshua?”

Warmth chased away the worry in Aziraphale’s tone. “The very same. It must be time for a feeding. Thank you, Anathema. I shall take your advice. You’re welcome to visit our cottage any time.”

“I know,” Anathema said. “But I think I’ll give you a few weeks to settle first. Goodbye, Aziraphale. Merry Christmas.”

“The same to you, my dear girl,” he said, and hung up.

Anathema glanced at the clock in her kitchen and decided that it would be better to process the arrival of the second coming of Jesus Christ in the morning after a good, long winter’s nap.

.

Maria Reyes had not slept a wink in two days. She wished that she could close her eyes and slip into that dark abyss, if only for a few moments. It would certainly give her a reprieve from her pain. Everything hurt: her body, her heart, her soul. How could she have let this happen? She’d failed God at the first step.

Her baby boy. She had lost him. Given him up. It was all the same to her. Maria had thought… that she could do it. That she could raise the literal Christ child, and juggle everything else. And then, while giving birth, she’d realized that she would be taking her child home to a motel room, with no one else in the world to help her.

Her family had turned their backs on her after she had broken it off with José. As for him, she didn’t think she could ever face José again after telling him that the baby she was pregnant with wasn’t his, and also that she was a lesbian.

Maria clutched at her small statue of Mother Mary. It had been her abuela’s, and it was the only thing of hers that Maria owned. 

“I’m not strong like you,” she told it, and tears streamed from her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

But at least her baby boy was safe. She trusted so much that he was safe. God had told her that two angels were taking care of him.

.

Finally, finally, Earth turned on its axis and it was Boxing Day. Crowley loaded Aziraphale and baby Joshua into the Bentley and shot off in the direction of the nearest shop that sold clothing for newborns. Aziraphale gripped Crowley’s sleeve, as always tightly yelling at him to slow down, all the while Joshua wailed in the backseat.

“Is it even safe to take a newborn out of the house?” asked Aziraphale. “Couldn’t he get sick?”

Well, they wouldn’t have had to go out on this little adventure had it not been for the angel’s stubborn refusal to continue to miracle clothing for the child, but Crowley wisely decided to keep that to himself.

It was beginning to dawn on him that between Aziraphale’s fretting, Joshua’s crying, and Crowley’s own stress about the next upcoming Apocalypse, he would never again know peace. And these past two years married to Aziraphale had so wonderful too, he lamented. Not a single worry or fear of Heaven and Hell coming to crush them.

But things would work out. They had to. He and Aziraphale were together, and nothing truly bad could happen so long as they were with each other.

And as for Joshua… Crowley just had to hope that they didn’t ruin him like they’d done with Warlock. Perhaps it really was best to raise him like any normal child. 

Crowley parked the Bentley with a screech of its brakes and turned to his husband with a smile. “We’re here.”

Aziraphale’s expression when they met eyes was as unimpressed as a cat’s. He opened the passenger door.

Joshua had tired himself out crying, and as soon as Crowley lifted the sleeping baby from the car seat, the car seat vanished.

He glanced at Aziraphale, who shrugged. “We’re going to buy one now, aren’t we?”

“I still don’t understand the difference,” said Crowley. “A car seat is a car seat, what does it matter if we pay for it or materialize it on our own?”

“Normal childhood,” Aziraphale reminded him.

“He won’t even remember this,” Crowley said, sulkily, as he followed Aziraphale into the shop.

They made a beeline for the clothes, where Aziraphale spent what felt like hours hemming and hawing over the selections. Crowley waited until his arms had started to go numb from holding the newborn before he spoke up, “Would you just pick some clothes?”

“ _Must_ everything be blue?” Aziraphale muttered.

“That’s just because you’re looking only in the boys’ section.” Normally Crowley would have taken credit for separating the colors along gendered lines, but not while Aziraphale was frustratedly trying to pick a nice balanced wardrobe for their child. It hadn’t been Crowley’s idea in the first place, anyway. “Just pick something pink from the girls’ section too, then. It isn’t like he’ll know the difference.”

“They come with hairbows,” Aziraphale despaired.

“He doesn’t _have_ to wear them,” Crowley pointed out. “He’ll outgrow them soon enough anyway.”

Reluctantly Aziraphale agreed and they moved onto looking for furniture for the nursery. This was where an employee, a young woman wearing an apron and her dark hair in high ponytail, approached them with a joke. “It seems as though I have some procrastinators. Isn’t it rather late to be picking out a crib?”

Aziraphale met the joke with a blank stare. “The baby came as a bit of a surprise.”

The employee’s smile froze on her face as she looked from Aziraphale and Crowley, and back. “Um. All right. Well, how can I help you?”

“We need a crib,” said Crowley, “and perhaps a changing table? Do people get those?”

“They do,” she agreed.

“And a car seat.” Joshua was once again beginning to grow restless in Crowley’s arms. He wrinkled his nose and internally cursed. Somehow he’d hoped the Christ child wouldn’t need his nappy changed.

“Perhaps one of everything in the shop?” the woman pressed, noticing that he didn’t have a nappy pack. Crowley felt his face start to heat as Aziraphale stepped forward to take Joshua from his arms. He dimly observed that Aziraphale had a nappy pack slung over his shoulder and realized that he must have miracled it up while the woman had been questioning Crowley. Hypocrite. Still, he couldn’t help but be grateful to his angel.

“Let me take care of him,” said Aziraphale. “Do you have a restroom, dear girl?”

The woman pointed to the back and Aziraphale left in a whirlwind. She cleared her throat awkwardly and forced a grin. “So what colors have you picked out for the nursery?”

Now that was something they had yet to talk about. But Crowley had a picture in his mind’s eye, and damn it if he wasn’t going to see it through. He knew Aziraphale would be pleased.

“Green.”


End file.
